The Missouri Breaks (1976)

It's hard to believe that a film with two of the greatest American actors in the last five decades has been so overlooked. I never realized Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson did a film together until I kept seeing it in the Western section at my local video store. Brando and Nicholson in a movie together? Are you kidding me? Cinema nirvana.

THE MISSOURI BREAKS is directed by the great, underrated Arthur Penn who directed BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967) as well as another excellent western LITTLE BIG MAN (1970). The screenplay is by novelist and screenwriter Thomas McGuane and MISSOURI BREAKS feels like a novel, moving at a leisurely, unhurried pace that's hard to imagine in today's action packed cinema.

Land baron David Braxton (John McLiam) has a horse thief hung. The gang of horse rustlers led by Tom Logan (Jack Nicholson) retaliates and hangs Braxton's best hand. Thus sets in motion Braxton hiring Robert E. Lee Clayton (Marlon Brando), an Irish "regulator" i.e. killer to get rid of the horse rustlers. Complicating matters is that Logan falls in love with Braxton's daughter Jane (played by newcomer Kathleen Lloyd).

Brando has the showier of the two roles (hard to believe with Nicholson) and he commands the screen with his flowing white mane, buckskin jacket, and Irish brogue. You can't take your eyes off the man. I can't help but wonder if Brando drove director Penn (and the studio) mad with some of his acting decisions in the film. He plays scenes wearing a woman's bonnet or a Chinese coolie hat. In one of his big scenes with Nicholson, Brando sits in a bubble bath. Brando paints an indelible character as Clayton, crazy as a fox yet cunning like a wolf for his prey.

Nicholson's Tom Logan is a different character than we're accustomed to seeing from him. Missing in this film are Nicholson's trademark Cheshire grin and crazy eyes. Instead, he's a loyal friend, dedicated to his gang and their profession. He just wants to be left to his rustling. But the encroaching world won't let him. He plays a game of cat and mouse with Brando's Clayton, pretending to be a landowner, trying to plant a crop, and courting the land baron's daughter as he waits for his gang to return from Canada with some horses. But Brando knows who he is and patiently awaits the rustlers to return.

The Montana west in MISSOURI BREAKS is not the pretty western towns and spectacular vistas of a John Ford or Howard Hawks film. It's muddy and dark and desolate and dangerous. Like a great many westerns in the late 60's and 70's, BREAKS is an eulogy to the Wild West. The time when a group of men could steal horses and make a living is over. Progress is taking over.

The supporting cast is excellent, especially Nicholson's gang. They're well known actors today but young and having the time of their lives in 1976. And they look like horse thieves: Randy Quaid (INDEPENDENCE DAY), Harry Dean Stanton (WILD AT HEART), and Frederic Forrest (APOCALYPSE NOW) make up the doomed gang.

As a teenager, I came upon Marlon Brando late in his career, when he was resigned to making million dollar cameos in films like SUPERMAN (1978) and APOCALYPSE NOW (1979). But check out his early films in the 50's and 60's, when he was considered the greatest American actor of his generation. It's hard to disagree.  Brando still shows he's got it in THE MISSOURI BREAKS. Yet, this film marks the celluloid passing of the torch to the next up and coming great American actor in Jack Nicholson.

The Caine Mutiny (1954)

A friend of mine recently said he was reading the novel THE CAINE MUTINY by Herman Wouk and asked if I had ever seen the movie. I had to admit I had not. So when my new favorite cable station HDNET MOVIES was showing it this month, I decided this was a good time to catch a film I had passed over on TV endless times before. Having not read the novel, I can only hope that the book is not nearly as melodramatic as the film. Produced by Stanley Kramer and directed by Edward Dmytryk, the film relates the story of the WWII minesweeper the Caine and the crew's "mutiny" against their paranoid Lt. Commander Captain Queeg (Humphrey Bogart) and the subsequent trial.

We're introduced to the crew: career naval man Lt. Steve Maryk (Van Johnson), glib communications officer Lt. Keefer (Fred MacMurray), comic relief provided by a young Lee Marvin and Claude Akins as Meatball and Horrible, and the idealistic new Ensign (Robert Francis), newly graduated from Princeton.

Actor Robert Francis continues the tradition of young actors in the 1950's, handsome but a bit over their head with veterans like Bogart and MacMurray. Francis reminds me of the young Jeffery Hunter with John Wayne in THE SEARCHERS (1956) or Geoffrey Horne with William Holden in THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI (1957). I'd never seen Francis in a film before and sadly, I learned he died a year later in 1955 in a small plane crash, having only made 4 films.
The first third of the film is a bit silly with a side love story involving Ensign Keith (Francis) and his singer girlfriend. A brief side trip to Yosemite for the two love birds is a mild annoyance and even the beauty of Yosemite National Park is underused.

But the film picks up with the introduction of Bogart's Queeg as he takes over command of the Caine and his determination to clean up the lackadaisical atmosphere of the ship. Director Dmytryk make great use of actual navy warships that add great authenticity to the story. The film was made just 9 years after WWII ended.

For me, Bogart's Captain Queeg is just an older version of his character Fred C. Dobbs in THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE (1948). Crusty and paranoid, Bogart does a fine job, making Queeg both vulnerable and despicable but it's a role he's done already.

The final third of the film is where THE CAINE MUTINY really shows its teeth. Van Johnson and Robert Francis "mutiny" to save the Caine during a typhoon as Queeg struggles to maintain command and his sanity. At the subsequent military trial, a great battle of wits ensues between military defense attorney Lt. Barney Greenwald (Jose Ferrer) and prosecuting defense attorney Lt. Commander Challee (E.G. Marshall). The trial is well written and staged.

Jose Ferrer steals the movie in the final act in my opinion. He'd rather go after the mutineers then the captain but realizes his duty. And, Fred MacMurray who we all know as the benevolent father in the TV show MY THREE SONS shows depth as an immoral cad.

I was glad to finally watch THE CAINE MUTINY. It listed a bit at the beginning like an old war ship but once it got going, it was a compelling drama.

In the Beginning ...

This blog is going to contain riffs about my favorite movies and movies I'm still just discovering. I'll reminisce about when and where I first saw the film and what I think about it now. Actors and actresses, directors and screenwriters, genres and guilty pleasures will all be covered. I hope you like movies as much as I do and I look forward to your comments and suggestions for films I should watch as well. I tend to be a film snob and with this blog, I hope to view many films I normally wouldn't watch.

So let's find our seat, grab some popcorn, let the lights slowly dim, and enjoy the movie and then converse about it.